These words rising loudly from my mother heralded the arrival of my grandfather
Edwards, my namesake and whom I called Grandpa Baloney. Why such a name?
After sitting on his lap relating the events of my young life since having
last seen Grandpa, he would always look at me for several moments and
say, "Aw! You're full of baloney".

He would let me sit in the Model-T truck he had just driven in from his
small farm on the fringe of Springfield Ill. I can still smell the pungent
odor of burnt wooden matches and tobacco that saturated the truck's sparse
upholstery. Naturally his work clothes carried the same odor which caused
my mother to start boiling aromatic spices on the black cook stove.

Whenever he came for a visit and, that was often during the Great Depression,
I was certain of two things:

First off, my mother met him at the door and barked that never changing
order regarding
his pipe. Secondly, the old chipped porcelain-topped table in the kitchen
was piled high with fresh vegetables during the season and root products
all winter. He was a great old guy who occasionally brought me a toy,
usually purchased with Between the Acts Coupons, and a master of funny
faces..

My father maintained the harsh smell came from grandpa's home-grown tobacco
mixed with store-bought chewing tobacco, Beechnut I think, or the stubs
of Between the Acts Little Cigars. I never minded the smell. Upon reflection,
it was an identity marker of one very close to my heart and whose visits
were often the high point of my week.

Dad
smoked a pipe and hand rolled his own cigarettes. Usually his source was
a five cent bag (only seen in western movies today) of Bull Durham, a
long-gone square cut mixed flake. However it was nothing as fowl as grandpa
smoked and was mildly tolerated in the house. Dad lost his job when the
Illinois Watch Company closed but once in a while, when he would get work,
Dad would have a pack of Lucky Strike, Twenty Grand or a tin of Half and
Half (the tin was narrow in depth and made in two sections to be collapsed
when the tobacco got lower in the can).

A note on Twenty Grand Cigarettes:
Aside from the regular pack selling for ten cents, one could purchase
a single extra long cigarette, about seven or eight inches. I don't know
the cost but the idea was that one could cut off any desirable length.
Twenty Grand faded out and disappeared, along with all major brands, with
the emergence and escalation of WWII. Major brands were replaced by the
Class B likes of Wings, Fatima Rameses or Picayune. Major brand cigarettes
by the millions were shipped free to GIs around the world and included
in all C Ration boxes.

Ernie Whitenack was born in 1928 in Springfield,
Illinois and moved to Massachusetts in the mid 1930's. He is a Korean
War veteran, worked as a photographic illustrator for 43 years and is
now retired.